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Jr B Northmen end season

August 6, 2014   ·   0 Comments

Playoff loss to Six Nations

They made it to the semi-final round of the Ontario Junior B Lacrosse League, but the Junior B Northmen ended their season Sunday night (Aug 3.) with a game four loss to the Six Nations Rebels at Tony Rose arena in Orangeville.

The Northmen had a stellar season going 17-3 in the regular season and winning their first round playoffs series over St. Catharines before knocking out the Windsor Clippers in the quarter-final round.

They knew their semi-final series against Six Nations was going to be a tough battle.

Six Nations went the entire regular season undefeated to finish in first place in the League before steamrolling through the first two playoff series without losing a game.

The Northmen handed Six Nations their first lost of the year on August 1, when they left the arena at Six Nations with a 10-9 win in game three of the series.

Hopes were high among Northmen fans when the series returned to Orangeville for game four.

With a packed arena cheering them on, the Northmen were down 3-0 at the five minute mark in the first period, but they responded with three goals before the buzzer sounded to end the frame at 4-3.

The second period did most of the damage when the Rebels blew the game wide open scoring six unanswered goals to lead 10-3 going into the final period and making the likelihood of a Northmen comeback slim at best. The final was 15-4.

“We wanted to have a better start than what we did. We wanted to get a bit of a roll early, but obviously we never got that chance,” Said Northmen head coach Bruce Codd after Sunday’s game. “Long story short, we wanted to get a better start and feed off some of the energy that was going to be in the building.”

The fact that the Northmen did as well as they did during the regular season says a lot about Codd and his coaching staff’s effort for the 2014 season. After losing several key players at the end of the 2013 season, the squad had several new players in the line-up.

“We thought we’d be a middle of the pack team at the start of the year with some of the key guys that we lost last year,” Codd said. “We finished at 17-3 for the year which is the best record this franchise has ever had in a regular season. At the end of the day, you always want to win but only one team ever gets to do that. If you look at the start to the finish, this team has improved so much, and obviously the future is pretty bright. I doesn’t feel the greatest right now, (after the loss) but when you step back and look at it, you realize we had a very strong year.”

The Northmen ended the regular season with a first place finish in the Mid West division of the OJBLL and were tied for second place overall in the 26 team League with 34 points for the final tally.

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